For the United States, the decade of the 1990s has been marked by unprecedented
prosperity. By every economic indicator, more Americans have jobs, fatter
paychecks, and more investments than ever before. But there is another boom
in progress. New US Census Bureau figures show that the number of Americans
locked out of the health care system because they have no health insurance,
far from improving along with the economy, has increased by a million over
the past year; 16.3% of the population (44 million Americans) now lack health
insurance.1